Test Installation

We've been hard at work, kicking up a storm of sawdust, lucite dust, metal shavings, and other debris.

It is hard to justify getting out Ross's digital camera to document our progress; I worry all the particles in the air might damage the lens. But who among us goes anywhere without their cell phone?

In the pictures in the following blogs, photos are all from our cells. My Nokia needs loads of light in order for the images to be clear; Edgar's iPod is marginally better....

The first image shows an exciting day in the Gallery: the test installation of our first "box".


What is it? A prototype of one of the box installations.
The idea for each box is to create a dynamic on how the scintillation panels react to being activated by the particles. Right now we are experimenting with black light, daylight, spotlight... any kind of light.




Ross hauls the box up to the ceiling with some help from the rest of the crew. Then we hook up the optics and it's lights out to enjoy the show.

Recycling in Earnest

Over the past few work days, Ross has constructed boxes from recycled plywood and lumber, ripping and cutting materials to size on the table saw. Once completed and fitted with light fixtures, these will be suspended in the air illuminating plates of scintillation material below them. These will become, essentially, "fake" particle collectors (WaltArt style).

Ian and Edgar have been helping to assemble and paint the light boxes.

Andrew works on another plate of scintillation material, to create the design before sand-blasting the material. He has cut his design using a box cutter and is ready for sand-blasting.


Edgar is making traction on his pyramid piece, first making a prototype of the pyramid out of scrap lumber in order to understand the dimensions of the larger piece and how the components will fit together. Eventually this piece will live atop the "brain"; however, at this point that seems like a long way off!


I have taken a flexible shaft drill to both surfaces of a plate of scintillation material. Originally I'd planned to use the sandblaster, then changed to the drill to have more control of the design. I am still digging out the tape that has worked its way into little crevices on the surface.

Grant proposal

Even a project based on recycled components can find itself needing a material that can't be found through recycling. Such is our need for certain parts of our installation.

So we spent our most recent workday writing a grant proposal to SAMI, the Science and Math Institute at Bellevue College.

Writing can be exciting stuff, but alas, no pictures to post of us pulling our hair out.

Thinking Outside the Toolbox

"It just occurred to me we could be listening to music!"
"And how would we be able to hear music above the noise that drill of yours is making?"

Seriously, though. What are some of the tools we're using for this project?

Alex has a plank made of the scintillation material and has laid two layers of carpenter's tape over it. As an aside, the plank has actually been sliced from a cube (of the same external dimensions), so it is possible to work with the material in many different forms. It makes sense for our project to use the planks which are about 24" on each side.


On top of the plank, she created her design using physics statements then she sandblasted the design from the material. Luckily, the piece just fits into the cabinet. Our sandblasting cabinet is sized for small bronze and metal sculpture work, and is located in the casting room. The room itself is interesting, with its concrete floor, a sand pit for aluminum casting, a natural gas kiln for Cone 10 ceramics firing, and many fittings for fuel and ventilation. It also has a large steel girder spanning the ceiling that can be used to run a hoist from the sand pit out to the loading area.

The sandblasting cabinet is about 5 ft in height, has a door which lifts upward through which you can place your piece(s) and two sleeves through which you manipulate the sprayer nozzle. A vacuum pump recycles the sand from the cabinet back into the sprayer.


The tape protects -- as much as possible -- the parts of the material that are to remain shiny. The design that is sandblasted takes on a pearly, opalescent appearance. We like how the UV light appears through this material.




As pieces are being assembled and disassembled, we are also experimenting with different light sources and different materials through which light could be shone.



We have samples of different polymers and fiber optic cable. Some of the materials shine or retain light under standard light conditions, some under UV, and some not very much at all.

The Pyramid Builder

Forty five degree angles, or sixty?

Ask AutoCAD.


The main assembly for the art installation will involve a housing -- imagine an aluminum rack for a bank of servers or electronics painted flat black -- with frames holding the slices of scintillation material.

Ross and Ian are building the frames from plywood and scrap lumber.


I'll post more photos from wood shop in the next blog. I had been working a piece of scintillation material with a flexible shaft drill and there were tiny, scratchy, and very electrostatic pieces of material everywhere. I didn't want to risk damaging the camera.

Increasing Entropy

It's all about disassembly and the generation of ideas, lots of ideas.




The scintillation material we're working with has been cut in large sheets, like plywood. We plan to etch or sandblast the surfaces and then experiment with different kinds of light shining through them.

Light and Action

After Laurel gave us the old Bellevue College Reader board, Brian hauled it over to the shop. The board is an assemblage of several sections with many LEDs wired into each section, so the whole componentry has literally hundreds of individually wired LEDs. It took a couple of hours -- mostly in the rain -- to disassemble all of the components.

After the first pieces of the board were dismantled, the components were brought into the lab for experimentation. Circuitry and power were re-established and the system was hooked up to a 120 outlet....

We were happily surprised (and at first, puzzled) when the pieces of the board Brian had hooked up began cycling through a startup loop that included time and temperature. Since only part of the board was hooked up, the array of lights represented only part of the message. So it took a minute for the message to sink in.

Edgar did an experiment by stripping the connector from an individual LED and connecting the LED's paired red and black wires to a speaker input on the lab stereo system. Then he turned on the stereo. Pulses of light accompanied the rock music that ensued.


"T_e T_me i_ n_w . . . " or
"T_e T_mp_r__ure i_ n_w . . . " ?